Extent of women participation in sugarcane production and marketing in India Sharma A.K., Prakash Brahm Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research, Lucknow-226 002, Uttar Pradesh Online published on 23 October, 2017. Summary Sugarcane, a labour intensive crop is raised in about 4.2 to 5 million ha by about 6 million cane growers in the country. Around 18 million women are directly associated with the cane farming as the farm family members. Sugarcane requires about 166 to 325 labour persondays per hectare and the family labour is also required in addition to casual and attached labourers. Most of the cane operations are carried out manually and the use of machinery is limited only for field preparation. State-wise analysis reveals that the human labour use for sugarcane is higher in tropical states (260 to 325 persondays) as compared to sub-tropical states (166 to 173 persondays). Also, the labour use per hectare is higher on large farms compared to small farms highlighting more demand for casual labour. Family labour is extensively used in sub-tropical compared to tropical region. Both men and women are hired as casual labour and are engaged for specific agricultural operations either on piece rate or daily wage basis. At the same time, the group labour consisting of 5 to 8 male and female workers of a village get engaged themselves under contractual arrangements. In some developed and cane intensive areas, most of the hired labour is also migrant labour from neighbouring surplus areas. Its proportion has decreased, where the extent of casual labour use is very high and replaced by the use of family labour on account of rising wage rates coupled with labour scarcity. Considering the female labour component, sugarcane occupies the lowest position with female labour accounting for 19.02 per cent of the total labour requirement against 54% in rice, 60% in cotton, 56.6% in chillies and 50.5% in groundnut. The use of women labour in sugarcane cultivation is limited to a few activities. The women labour participation in sugarcane is higher in case of sowing operations where women are engaged either in sett-cutting or in placing FYM or the setts in furrows while planting sugarcane compared to 26% in interculture operations. For the important operation of sugarcane harvesting which is also a component of marketing in case of sugarcane, it is just 13%. Sugarcane cultivation gives employment to labourers and thus is the source of income of these categories of households benefiting women and children also. At aggregate level, about 883 million persondays are required as labour days annually for sugarcane cultivation out of which, the women labour work is worth Rs 3,355 crore per annum in sugarcane cultivation, out of which around Rs. 1,843 crore are paid as wages to hired women work. Women role in jaggery marketing was estimated up to 30%. The sugar growing state of Uttar Pradesh is found to have low female labour force participation rate. There is a need for reorienting of the existing strategies for the development of women SHGs in sugarcane based value added products, contract farming in sugarcane for social security of women, gender considerations in mechanization and technology development. Top |